The creepiest crawlie!

WARNING:  You are about to see a close encounter of the spidery kind.  Quick, avert your eyes and skip on to the next post if spiders are not your thing.

this guy was super fast and I was frantically following it around with the camera, kind of close, to get a Macro mode photo.  At one point it got a little annoyed; here it's definitely looking right at me and sort of menacing the camera with it's chelicerae (the blue mouth parts).  I believe it's commonly known as the "Bold Jumping Spider".  It was pretty cool, but looking at it now is kind of giving me the creeps!

Let there be light!

Photons, baby, I need more photons, and not just plain old ordinary photons, no, I need soft, diffuse, evenly dispersed photons for photographing stuff. 
I came across this fun, easy tutorial for making your own, super cheap light box, http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html.  I gave it a crack this weekend and here are the results.

Take any regular cardboard box, any size that's big enough to fit the stuff you want to take pictures of.

regular cardboard box

box cutters, scissors and duct tape make quick work of the rest.

Now, just add some freshly pressed and starched plain white fabric, some people use tracing paper, but I think the fabric will stand the heat of the lights a little better with the added bonus of not as prone to tearing as paper.

tape translucent material to each side

I made some comparison photographs using a few different lighting setups, normal and with the new lightbox using a few different background colors, oh yeah and they're from 2 different cameras:

• normal using 2 overhead fluorescent lights
• just on white poster-board with 2 overheads
• inside lightbox with lights on either side through side panel diffusers, on a white background
• inside lightbox, on light blue background
• inside lightbox, on a dark blue background.

Now, before we get to the actual comparison photos, let's get one thing straight, I am a rank amateur photographer and I love to try to fix them up digitally using free photo software like Shutterfly, so the following photos are not necessarily shot at the same settings on the cameras and they have been edited to make them look good to my very untrained eye.  Disclaimer out of the  way, here we go:

normal room lighting conditions (weak overhead and 2 fluorescent task lights on swing arms)

Lumix, std light on table

Nikon, std light on table

same lighting, placing object on white posterboard.

 

 just putting down a white background makes a dramatic difference in the photos

Lumix, std light on white

Nikon, std light on white

OK, finally with the new lightbox, on the same white poster board as above

Lumix, lightbox white

Nikon, lightbox white

now, same lightbox, this time with a dark blue background.

lightbox with dark blue background

Lumix, lightbox drk blue

Nikon, lightbox drk blue

Overall, I think the most improvement came from simply putting the marble on the white posterboard, but those photos also showed 2 very bright spots where the overhead lights were shining on them. 

The lightbox made some improvements in the lighting, it was more diffuse and even, however the marble still showed the light glare pretty well.  Maybe I should add another layer of fabric to diffuse it even more.

The light blue background (not shown in the photos above) was not worth the effort as I kept trying to color correct them to either white or dark blue. So, clearly, my mind's eye just doesn't like the "neither blue nor white" color scheme.

The dark blue background was also quite nice, the effect of the dark blue on the colors is interesting. 

The camera comparison showed my trusty point and shoot Lumix can stand up proudly against the fancy Nikon digital SLR.  I haven't practiced much with the Nikon, and I think the pictures reflect that.  I like both cameras for different reasons, the Lumix actually fits in my back pocket quite handily.  The Nikon is a sweet digital SLR that can take some amazing photos when I have time to dig into the manual.

As for the lightbox, I'll add more fabric to the outside and give it another go when I have something else to photograph, but for $10 this thing was worth it just for the entertainment value already  :  )

Ideas we wish Saturday Night Live would consider

Occasionally, as Craig and I are sitting around watching TV, we have these great ideas for spoofs we think Saturday Night Live would love.  Sadly, the Saturday Night Live website doesn't agree and will not take random submissions.  This, unfortunately for you dear reader, leaves me to share these strange thoughts here on this blog.

Now for these to work, you need to have some familiarity with the basic premise of the show, and since I know I have readers who profess to "not watch that much TV", hmmpf, I shall provide some explanation of the show premise.

Scenario #1 - Project Runway - Extreme Challenge

• premise: a dozen or so clothing designers compete to be the big winner (lots of $$, fame, etc), each show a different crazy challenge is given to the group, like "make mother/daughter matching outfits for under $50 total", at the end of each show the worst designer is eliminated.  The designers are highly motivated to win the contest.

now imagine they are down to the last 4 or 5 contestants, the winner of this night's challenge gets to dress a big Hollywood star for the Oscar's (major big deal for designers).

As the host, Tim Gunn,  enters the cutting/sewing back room, all the remaining contestants look expectantly at  him, he puts his hands together and sorts of hides a grin behind his steepled fingers:  "Designers, today's challenge will be to make a fashionable raincoat for some underprivileged little ones".  The designers are obviously expecting cute little children, but as the door opens behind the host, in walks animal shelter workers leading scruffy mutts behind them on leashes. 

Now, being the eager contestants they are, they immediately start petting the dogs (even the flaming queen who hates dogs) and trying to work out cute doggie coat designs.  They are really taking this seriously and begin cutting and sewing furiously to try to wow the judges with their fun and funky designs.

Several hours into the challenge, in walks the host again and says "Designers, we are going to add a little wrinkle to this challenge", dun, dun, dun, pregnant pause, "the remainder of this challenge will have to be completed... without the use of your HANDS!" . Gasp! all the contestants then start frantically crawling around the dogs on hands and knees, trying to pull the garments into place with their mouths, noses, elbows, whatever, just not their hands!  Ha, Ha, Ha

I think this would be quite hilarious especially with crazy professional comedians who can just run wild with the concept and improvise super insane antics!!

stay tuned for more crazy TV spoof ideas, like "Ghost Hunters, Pet Edition"

A statement? about what? and to whom?

As I was driving down the highway to the annual Walk On The Wild Side at Stone Lakes, I spotted this trash by the side of the road, directly under the $1000 fine for littering sign.  Is this some kind of redneck protest, a political statement or what?   And you're probably thinking, maybe some dummy just happened to dump here and didn't even notice the sign.  To that I say, possibly, but there was really nothing, and I mean nothing around for miles, so I think it was deliberate.  I just don't understand people who will go to this length to mess up a perfectly nice nature area just to tweak the nose of some government official (who's probably the poor Caltrans person who has the clean this s*&t up).  I mean, what's the logical alternative; to remove the sign so anyone can just throw their trash out of the window anywhere??  That's surely not the city I want to live in.

The walk through the Stonelakes National Wildlife refuge was great, this is the 2nd time I've gone.  They have all sorts of interesting vendors, but it's not too commercial, most of the table/tents were organizations devoted to environmental causes and the proceeds of sales are donated toward the cause.    There were also wildlife education/demonstrations on bats, local and invasive water species (hyacinth and sport fish), and the local flora and fauna.  The guy from Wild Things, Inc, pictured below does a wildlife demonstration annually, bringing rehabilitated but still "too damaged to release" critters like a turkey vulture, horned owl, beaver and rattlesnake. 

This year he has the cutest juvenile red fox. Which we learned they will have to keep forever as it is illegal to release red fox back into the wild in this part of California.  While there are some native red fox in California, the ones around here are thought to be fur farm escapees who have "gone native".  According to a 1993 Fish and Game study, the non-native fur farm red foxes are a predatory threat to several endangered bird species, but the newest information published in the Sacramento Bee this year indicates that there is a particular subspecies of red fox that IS native, so who knows?  Native or not this guy was one foxy little pup!

Reading Redux

Getting older so far hasn't yielded too many changes I've been thrilled about.  It takes longer to find the right words sometimes, the jelly rolls around the middle are multiplying and my feet get tired faster (in fact, I really never noticed my feet before, they always carried me uncomplaining for hours on end until just last year).  So I was completely delighted to discover a bonafide benefit of aging: I can now re-read some of my most favorite books from the past.  Many years ago I thought I could never re-read a book as I would recall the entire story after only a paragraph or two. 
A couple of things have happened that make re-reading a book possible and sometimes truly great.  I can no longer recall the story lines from the past so easily, which I shall choose to chalk up to my brain being full up with all the books I have read and the life I've lived.  The other change is that I am finding more pleasure in the tone and literary craftsmanship of good writers as a separate aspect of the book than the actual story line, a well crafted sentence, a witty reference, humorous pun or beautifully evocative imagery can really make my day.  Most recently I picked up Snow Crash from the local library, a book I read 15 years ago and I am really enjoying it, Neal Stephenson has a great ear for street lingo and is wonderfully imaginative.

Spring has sprung!

We took the dogs for a walk down to the cafe by way of the creek for the first time since last fall.  Everything is so green and bursting with life. 

It also looks like a community group is putting in a large, subdivided community garden.  What a great use of otherwise wasted space upwind of the sewage plant where no-one in their right mind would want to build a house, although a few intrepid souls actually do live near it.  I wonder if the houses were there before the plant was built?

Bizarre bug identified as "House Centipede"

The weird bug has been identified as a House Centipede thanks to the helpful people at BugGuide.com. This insect is considered beneficial as it is a voracious predator of other bugs of a similar size like roaches, earwigs and I hope ants (we have ant infestations on weekly basis). I was a little concerned that it was poisonous, but the info says:

"House centipedes are aggressive predators to things their own size but are not considered dangerous to humans. Their small jaws (actually modified front legs) cannot easily pierce human skin. In the rare event you were bitten, pain and swelling may result, but it would probably be no worse than a bee sting."

doggie breath, it can save your life

another amazing animal fact for your reading pleasure:

Dogs can detect if someone has cancer just by sniffing the person's breath, a new study shows.
Ordinary household dogs with only a few weeks of basic "puppy training" learned to accurately distinguish between breath samples of lung- and breast-cancer patients and healthy subjects.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html

Now, if I can only convince Max that cancer breath = cookies, we're in business!

going batty!

Amazing animal fact of the day:

... an anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart/stroke patients.

http://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20030109/vampire-bats-take-bite-out-of-stroke

Stories like this just make my whole day : ) I will include these interesting tidbits as an on-going addition to the blog.

on a completely different note; today we actually witnessed Jolly the green giant parakeet grooming the little brown finch chick, who knew there could be such tender interspecies love?